Looking for some sounding-board advice or comments regarding this crazy plan I have: Since I can't find a 1/350 Jimmy Carter kit on the market, I'm thinking of trying to build one from two Bronco Seawolf class kits. As many of you will know, the J.C. is the third an final boat of the class, but it's a hundred feet longer than its sisters ships, Seawolf and Connecticut.

I bought two Seawolf kits but haven't started this yet. Mainly, I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to get that extra hull in there. I'll start by measuring carefully and then cutting through one of the kits' hulls, top and bottom, so that I have 100 feet of hull in 1/350 scale. That's easy. The problem is how to come up with a strong hull that will hold together for the actual model. My plan:

On the second kit, make cuts on top and bottom hull halves to allow insertion of extra hull from first kit. My idea is to then take a piece of posterboard of the appropriate length and roll it so it forms a cylinder just slightly smaller than the diameter of the sub -- basically,so that it would fit on the inside of the joined sub body cylinder. In essence,it would become a stiffener, to which the six pieces of hull could be attached -- top and bottom aft hull, top and bottom inserted hull, top and bottom forward hull. My thinking is this should offer enough stability so that the finished model holds together and, in fact, is actually sturdy.

I would use a zona saw to cut, as it cuts very fine,not a rotory cutter. A strip of styrene could be CAed in place,like the RC boats index tabs. I did that on a Trumpetor Seawolf conversion, and it worked quite well. I used a little evercoat to blend it in. Then primed, and I was done.Do watch the alingment closely. Perhaps do on half on a flat table using a straight edge against one side as you glue the parts together. Once one half is done, I would use it as a guide to aling the opposite side. I would love to see you do this one.

One of the items to pay attention to is the location of the three passive sonar side arrays. These are equally spaced down the length of the hull. There are also vents in the "Mission Module" center section of the Carter, as an extensive part of the midbody is free flooding. If you go to my Member's Homepage, there are some photos I took of the Carter at her commissioning that may be of some help to you.

I did get the 1/700 kit from Hobby Boss, and it's actually pretty good!It does show more space between the front two passive sonar arrays and the middle two. Did they get that wrong?

If you look carefully at this photo at the highest resolution, I think (even though it is at an angle) it shows the three passive sonar wide aperture arrays (WAA) as being equally spaced along the length of the hull:http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08002301.jpg. The first one is just under and forward of the American flag, the second one (hardest to see) is just under and forward of the blue banner on the hull, and the aft array is just forward of the scaffolding at the stern. The AN/BSY-2 suite would receive and integrate sonar from these arrays, as well as the bow spherical array and the towed arrays. The idea behind the side arrays is similar to the older 1960's PUFFs arrays; the arrival time of the sound, using the baseline of three spaced arrays along the length of the hull, would yield a bearing and a very rough distance to the source. Depending on the water temperature, the speed of sound in water is 4600-5100 ft/second, much faster than in air. So, there is a lot of signal processing to sort out arrival times as relative bearings to the length of the hull. To simplify the already complicated signal processing, it would make the most sense to have the three WAA equally spaced along the hull.

Also note in the photo the three large freefloods for the middle "Multi Mission Module" near where the gap in the two sets of mobile support cradles is located. The upper vent is located above these near the top of the hull.